The Old Dominion, the state that many observers said last year had finally turned blue, is starting to look like it could become red all over again. If current polls hold up, the Republicans are poised to sweep all three state offices Nov. 3, breaking the string of Democratic victories in two gubernatorial elections, two U.S. Senate races and Barack Obama’s historic win in the state last year.

And this shift is possibly happening with the ticket led by a candidate whose close association with the Christian right movement and controversial writings and positions on social issues easily would have sunk the GOP in past election seasons in Virginia. So what is different this year?

In part, the GOP success so far is the result of national trends that neither campaign can influence. Since the Jimmy Carter era, the party that wins the White House one year loses the Virginia gubernatorial election the next. It is an early harbinger of the midterm correction phenomenon.

But even so, if the party out of power in Washington nominates a social issues extremist to head the ticket, the modern trend could easily be broken. And here is the problem for Democrats in Virginia this year: They believe the GOP has nominated such an unacceptable candidate for governor, but they have not convinced the public that he is outside the mainstream.

GOP nominee Bob McDonnell is a model candidate of the evolution of the religious right and the movement’s relationship with the Republican Party in Virginia. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, such a nominee running on economic issues would have been called a “stealth candidate”: someone who was in the game to promote a social conservative agenda but concealing his real purpose by talking about everything else. And there would have been a lot of prominent GOP business leaders and politicians outing him and then campaigning openly against him.

But in McDonnell’s case, he wasn’t a stealth candidate in the ’90s. When he first won his state delegate seat in 1991, he was open about his views on social issues, and the Christian Coalition later claimed credit for his success. Throughout his legislative career, he made social issues a focus of his efforts. But as a candidate for state office four years ago, he was all about law-and-order issues. This year, he’s talking mostly about the economy and transportation — but not abortion. Voters outside his former legislative district don’t know his past record so well. That has allowed McDonnell to recast himself as a mainstream Republican focused on jobs, roads and schools.

But this strategy requires cooperation from the other GOP factions. In the 1990s, many moderate Republicans walked out of conventions that nominated religious right candidates and organized splinter groups called Reclaim the GOP. Leaders such as former Sen. John Warner refused to endorse party nominees (e.g., Mike Farris) and actively recruited an independent candidate to sink a party nominee (i.e., Oliver North). Back then, the state GOP was in the middle of a blood bath to determine which faction would lead the party. The different factions were at times pointing their guns more at each other than at the other party.

Religious right leaders and candidates learned to tone down their rhetoric, stopped talking about party “takeovers” and eventually seemed less threatening to the moderates. Then they brought a ton of new energy into the party. GOP moderates eventually understood the value of this new party activism and decided to accommodate the new party members rather than try to run them out of town. Over time, the party factions mostly made peace with each other because they saw how that could be mutually beneficial.

McDonnell would not have much credibility running as a mainstream Republican if he did not have the support of many local business leaders and others outside the social conservative movement. It must be enormously frustrating to Democrat Creigh Deeds that he is currently losing to a guy whose views on social issues are no different than those of past Republican candidates who never passed the test of looking mainstream.

But unlike some of those past candidates, McDonnell is a kind of bilingual Republican: He can talk the secular language of mainstream politics just as well as he can talk (and write) in language familiar in evangelical discourse. His ability to speak to different audiences and appear mainstream, his support from a broad sector of the GOP’s factions and certain national trends at play make him a tough candidate to beat.

Mark J. Rozell is a professor of public policy at George Mason University. He is co-author of “Second Coming: The New Christian Right in Virginia Politics” (Johns Hopkins University Press).